This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Mobster pleads not guilty in ‘Goodfellas’ airport heist

The FBI has made five arrests in connection with the infamous 1978 Lufthansa heist, in which more than $5 million were stolen from the JFK Airport.(Newsy)

By Tom HaysThe Associated Press

Thu., Jan. 23, 2014

NEW YORK—More than 30 years after hooded gunmen pulled a $6-million airport heist dramatized in the hit Martin Scorsese movie Goodfellas, an elderly reputed mobster was arrested at his New York City home on Thursday and charged in the robbery and a 1969 murder.

Vincent Asaro, 78, was named along with his son, Jerome, and three other defendants in a wide-ranging indictment alleging murder, robbery, extortion, arson and other crimes from the late 1960s through last year.

The Asaros, both identified as captains in the Bonanno organized crime family, pleaded not guilty through their attorneys and were ordered held without bail at a brief appearance in federal court in Brooklyn.

The elder Asaro’s attorney, Gerald McMahon, told reporters outside court that his client was framed by shady turncoat gangsters, including former Bonanno boss Joseph Massino — the highest-ranking member of the city’s five organized crime families to break the mob’s vow of silence.

He added that Asaro had given him “marching orders” that “there will be no plea and he will walk out the door a free man.”

Article Continued Below

The indictment accused Asaro of helping to direct the Dec. 11, 1978, Lufthansa Airlines heist at Kennedy airport — one of the largest cash thefts in American history.

Gunmen looted a vault in the airline’s cargo terminal and stole about $5 million in untraceable U.S. currency that was being returned to the United States from Germany, along with about $1 million in jewelry. The cash was never found.

An unidentified mob associate, who pleaded guilty and became a co-operating witness, told investigators that he participated in the robbery at the direction of Asaro, according to court papers. The theft was hatched by James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, a late Lucchese crime family associate who was close to Asaro.

Each robber was supposed to be paid $750,000, but the co-operating witness said “most did not receive their share, either because they were killed first or it was never given to them,” according to the court papers.

The papers say the co-operator wore a wire and recorded a conversation he had with Asaro in 2011 in which the pair discussed being slighted.

“We never got our right money, what we were supposed to get,” Asaro said, according to the court papers. “Jimmy Burke kept everything.”

In addition to the heist, the elder Asaro was charged in the 1969 murder of Paul Katz, whose remains were found last year during an FBI dig at a house once occupied by Burke.

According to the co-operating witness, Asaro and Burke were business partners in Robert’s Lounge, the court papers say. The saloon was described by a fellow Lucchese associate of Burke, the late Henry Hill, as Burke’s private cemetery.

“Jimmy buried over a dozen bodies . . . under the bocce courts,” Hill wrote in his book, A Goodfella’s Guide to New York.

Katz once owned a warehouse where mobsters stored stolen goods, according to the court papers.

The indictment alleged that in December 1969, Asaro “together with others . . . did knowingly and intentionally cause the death of Paul Katz,” but provided no further details.

Burke inspired Robert De Niro’s character in Goodfellas, which was based on Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy and told the story of Hill’s time in the mob and subsequent co-operation with law enforcement.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com